Turns out, calling someone a bird brain may not be such an insult after all.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1200618,00.jpg
Researchers at the University of Oldenburg in Germany have found that the brains of parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds -- like the starlings shown here -- aren't that different from our own when it comes to which areas of the brain are in charge of vocalization. Indeed, speech (and song) centers are closely connected with that chunk of gray matter responsible for movement. In other words, as researcher Dr. Henrik Mouritsen put it this week, "spoken language is the highly specialized ability to control movement in our larynx."
DDP